BILLS GONE WILD! CITIES' NEW WAY TO GOUGE YOU Private lawyers charge woman $6,000 for prosecuting
her, by Bob Unruh, 2/19/18, WND
There
is an abundance of public-private partnerships these days. For years, private contractors
have provided visitors various services in the nation’s parks and monuments.
There are highway projects and even airports that are built and maintained
through such agreements.
The routine is that the contractors
charge fees and then retain a portion while remitting the rest to the
government. The partnership often saves
the government money, as private companies must be competitive to survive,
producing the best results at the lowest cost.
However, there’s one public-private
partnership that doesn’t quite follow that model. In fact, a lawsuit challenges an agreement in
which some California cities have contracted with a private law firm,
Silver & Wright, to prosecute code violations.
It’s because the law firm, in addition
to forcing defendants to pay fines for such things as allowing a chicken
in a backyard ($225), bills the defendants for every second of time the lawyers
spend prosecuting them. For the chicken case, it was about $6,000.
The Institute
for Justice filed
the suit because California courts “have made it clear that it is illegal for
prosecutors to have a direct financial stake in the cases they bring.”
In the prosecutions handled by the
private law firm, which contracted with the city of Indio, members of the firm
cash in directly when they take a case to court. And they cash in again if the
defendant protests or appeals.
It’s a class
action lawsuit asking the California courts “to shut down Silver
& Wright’s unconstitutional scheme,” the Institute for Justice said.
“No one should have a warrant out for
their arrest and be forced to pay $6,000 to resolve a simple dispute about a
few backyard chickens,” said Jeffrey Redfern, an attorney at the Institute for
Justice, which represents Ramona Morales. Morales was charged for allowing
her tenants to have a few chickens.
“This could have been resolved with
a simple phone call, but it wasn’t, in part,
because Silver & Wright’s business model creates a perverse financial
incentive to prosecute cases like Ramona’s in criminal court, rather than treat
homeowners with goodwill,” Redfern contended.
Morales, IJ explained, has worked for
most of her life cleaning houses and selling Avon makeup in California’s
Coachella Valley. In 2015, after receiving a pair of confusing warnings, Ramona
received a $75 citation in the mail from the city of Indio. It said that a city
inspector noticed a chicken in the backyard of a home she rents out.
Silver & Wright, under contract,
immediately went to criminal court, which meant that police issued a warrant
for her arrest.
She told the court her tenants were
confused about the legality of raising chickens in Indio and ultimately agreed
to pay the nominal fine.
Then, Silver & Wright demanded
$3,030 in fees for the private lawyers. She appealed and they billed her
an additional $2,528.
“Ramona’s fight in Indio is only one of
many prosecutions initiated by Silver & Wright. Starting in 2013, dozens of
California cities began to hire the newly formed firm to, among other things,
serve as official city prosecutor for code enforcement cases.
The firm’s pitch was appealing. It
offered ‘cost neutral or even revenue producing’ prosecution services, so long
as the city changed its ordinances to allow the firm to directly bill property
owners for its full attorneys’ fees, which range from $159 to $175 per hour,”
IJ said.
“As a result, homeowners agreeing to pay
small fines for minor code infractions were later billed thousands of
dollars under the guise of ‘cost recovery’ by a law firm acting in an official
capacity.”
The business model is set up to profit.
If a property owner agrees to plead guilty and pay a fine, that person is
billed by Silver & Wright for the prosecution. If the owner fights
it, he is billed by Silver & Wright for the prosecution. But the arrangement creates a
“perverse” profit incentive for the prosecutors, who personally benefit from
the defendants, IJ said.
“As we’ve seen in so many other areas of
law, perverse financial incentives have no place in the justice system,” said
IJ Attorney Josh House. “Government prosecutors have a duty to seek justice,
not maximize earnings or generate revenue for a city. In Indio, and across
California, Silver & Wright is treating homeowners like ATMs. The U.S.
Supreme Court has made it clear that
prosecutors cannot have a personal financial stake in the cases they bring.
We’re confident the California courts will see this for what it is: an illegal
attempt to turn a profit off of the criminal justice system.”
The lawsuit also names the lawyers
and the city of Indio as defendants. It asks that Ramona’s case be
reversed since “at the time she pleaded guilty, she had no idea that her
prosecutor had a personal, financial stake in the case.” The case also seeks the return of all
fees the lawyers have collected, which appear to total in the hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
Comments
Predatory
ordinances is a nation-wide problem that is related to city manager and staff
run municipalities that are focused on raising revenue to pay high salaries.
City councils could control this, but they don’t. They prefer to let the
“professionals” run things. It’s part of the current trend to make voters
irrelevant.
“Reformers”
are labeled “not community minded” and normally don’t win elections and if they
do, they quickly succumb to “group-think”.
Cities
are still focused on “economic development” subsidized by “tax holidays” and
direct subsidies financed with Bonds that make everything cost double. They
want to spend big and put it on the credit card. They claim they are simply increasing
property values.
You also
have cities picking incompetent crony vendors, consultants, lawyers and
contractors and paying double on these as well. States have “municipal
associations” that encourage this behavior and keep city staff salaries high by
telling cities what salaries they have to pay.
Agenda 21
structures are still in place in “Handbooks for Mayors and City Councils and
the goal is to squander money and bankrupt local governments.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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